Community

If you write or have thought about writing or know someone who does, one truth rings out strong and clear. Writing is lonely work. You sit, alone and think. And think and think and then write and think some more and then hit delete a bunch of times and then write and write and write. Every now and then you come up for air and usually at least in my case, hours have gone by and I’ve really got to pee. I don’t mean to be crass, but that’s the truth of it.

How can that happen? How can you spend so much time alone? I think because while I’m physically alone I’m not really alone. I’m lost in a world, of my own creation. I have created my own community. And as much as that might smell of a rank dose of self-important god complex, my world, for as much as I plot and plan and draw diagrams and collect pictures of who and what I think lives there, still seems to have a mind of its own.

This article was supposed to be about community. We are all part of many different communities; work, home, family. I am part of a writers critique group that I meet with once a week. I highly recommend finding a group of writers with similar passions about writing, who can share their work and their journey with each other. That community offers me a place where I can be pushed to be the best writer I can be in a safe and joyful arena. For the month of November I am part of a grand community of writers who all collectively invite the muse to visit them. And in that month I explore a brand new community of characters and settings and worlds that live in my mind and manifest on the page.

Maybe I’m just nuts but I guess writing isn’t that lonely after all. I’ve got plenty of company.

One third down, two thirds to go, my fellow NANOWRIMO-ites. Heads down and keep going!